a Senior Officer, turned, left his platoon and ran back at the double to the fire-trench.

It was three-quarters of an hour before we drew near that unpleasant bourne. In the imitation communication trench, which began a hundred or more yards behind it, we met the Subaltern, hurrying to rejoin his platoon, bearing what seemed to be an enormous despatch-box. He said "Good night" very politely.

By the time we got up the shelling had slackened. The last remaining officer of the Royal What-you-call-'ems stopped to pass the time o' night with us.

I asked him if he knew who the Subaltern might be, and what object of overwhelming importance he had thus returned to retrieve.

"Yes, that was Billy Blank."

"And what was it he was carrying when we met him?"

"A sort of young Saratoga?"

We nodded. Our informant seemed to hesitate a moment.

"Well," he said at last, "I don't see why you shouldn't know, though it's a sort of battalion secret—not that Billy would mind anyone knowing. It's his love-letters."

Vicarious Prophylactics.

"How you may dodge the horrible 'Grippe.'"

"Give your children a cold shower every morning."—Ottawa Evening Journal.

"At the time when Turnbull was asking for the account, and flourishing suggestions as to his ability to pay, there was in the prisoner's bank the sum of sixteen pence."

Newcastle Evening Chronicle.

We have reason to believe that there was also an odd shilling or two in the bank belonging to other clients.

From an account of "Calls to the Bar in Ireland":—

"Mr. —— was awarded the Society's Exhibition of £21 per annum for three roars."

Irish Evening Paper.

He seems to have called himself to the Bar.

RAILWAY LINES.

MY LIFE.

(With acknowledgments to Mr. G. R. Sims.)

Being a few Foretastes of the Great Feast to follow.

Peering backward into the gulf of time as I sit in my grandfather's chair and listen to the tick of my grandfather's clock I see a smaller but more picturesque London, in which I shot snipe in Battersea Fields, and the hoot of the owl in the Green Park was not yet drowned by the hoot of the motor-car—a London of chop-houses, peg-top trousers and Dundreary whiskers....

I remember the Derby of Caractacus and the Oaks of Boadicea. Once more I see "Eclipse first and the rest nowhere." I remember "Old Q." and Old Parr, Arnold of Rugby and Keate of Eton, Charles Lamb and General Wolfe, Charles James Fox and Mrs. Leo Hunter; the poets Burns and Tennyson, the latter of whom gave me my name of "Dagonet."

I think back to a London of trim-built wherries and nankeen pantaloons, when The Times cost as much as a dozen oysters, which everyone then ate. I remember backing myself in my humorous way to eat sixty "seconds" in a minute and winning the bet.

I look back to the time when Betty, the infant Roscius, and Grimaldi, and Nell Gwynn and Colley Cibber and Robson and Fechter and Peg Woffington were the chief luminaries of the histrionic firmament. I remember the débuts of Catalani and Malibran and Piccolomini and Broccolini and Giulio Perkins.

I remember the opening of the Great Exhibition of 1851, the erection of Drayton's "Polyolbion," the removal of the Wembley Tower, and the fight between Belcher and the gas-man.

I often think of the battles of Waterloo and Blenheim and Culloden and Preston Pans and Cannæ. I often think of next Sunday with a shudder.

I see Count d'Orsay careering along Kensington Gore in his curricle; Lord Macaulay sauntering homeward to Campden Hill, and Lord George Sanger driving home to East Finchley behind two spanking elephants.

I see Jerusalem and Madagascar and North and South Amerikee...

It was on the eve of the anniversary of the battle of Cressy that I first drew breath on August 25th, "somewhere" in the Roaring Forties. The date was well chosen, for my maternal great-great-grandfather had amassed a considerable fortune by the manufacture of mustard, and the happy collocation was destined to bear conspicuous fruit in after years.

Good old Herodotus, my favourite reading in my school-days, tells us how old-world potentate, in order to discover which was the most ancient language in the world, had two children brought up in strict seclusion by dumb nurses, with the result that the first word they uttered was "Beck," the Phrygian for bread. Strange to say this was not my first linguistic effort, which was, as a matter of fact, the Romany word "bop."

Although I shall probably write my autobiography again a few details about my ancestry are pardonable at this juncture.

My great-great-great-great-grandfather was a robust Devon yeoman who fought with Drake in the Spanish main, but subsequently married the daughter of a Spanish Admiral, made captain at the time of the Armada, Count Guzman Intimidad Larranaga. The daughter, Pomposa Seguidilla, came to England to share her father's imprisonment, and my ancestor fell in love with her and married her. She was a vivacious brunette with nobly chiselled features and fine Castilian manners. Their son Alonzo married Mary Lyte of Paddington, so that I trace my descent to the Lytes of London as well as to the grandees of Spain.... Incredibly also I was one of the Hopes of England.

And now, when London has no light any more, I take pen in hand to retrace the steps of my wonderful journey through the ages. Ah me! Eheu fugaces!

Among my early reading nothing made so much impression on me as Mrs. Glasse's Cookery Book, and I still remember the roars of laughter that went up when I read out a famous sentence in my childish way: "First tatch your hair." Those words have stuck to me through life and have had a deep influence on my career. Strange how little we know at the time which are our vital moments.

I remember standing, when still only of tender years, listening to Bow bells and vowing that, if I grew